The 8 Best Resume Fonts (and 5 That Get You Rejected)
A font can't get you hired, but it can get you skimmed past. The goal is invisible professionalism: type that renders everywhere, parses cleanly, and doesn't draw attention to itself.
Safe, professional choices
Sans-serif: Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Lato, Roboto — clean and modern, ideal for tech and startups. Serif: Georgia, Garamond, Cambria — traditional authority for law, finance, academia. All eight ship with or render reliably on every system, which matters when your PDF is opened on unknown machines.
Sizes that work
Body text 10.5–12pt; your name 18–24pt; section headers 12–14pt. Below 10pt, readability collapses on screens and some ATS text extraction degrades.
Fonts that hurt you
- Times New Roman — not wrong, but reads as "didn't change the default".
- Comic Sans and handwriting fonts — instantly unprofessional.
- Ultra-thin display fonts — disappear when printed or scanned.
- Condensed fonts used to cram more text — recruiters recognize the trick.
- Anything decorative in the body; personality belongs in your bullets, not your glyphs.
One rule above all
Pick one font family, two at most (headers + body), and never mix serif body text with sans headers mid-document.